This Map Shows The 623 Power Outages Caused By Squirrels

A cyber war was waged in Indiana Saturday that left 4,000 residents without power for more than four hours. The culprit wasn’t the Islamic State or Al-Qaida. It was a squirrel.

The weekend attack was released by website Cyber Squirrel 1 in union with the site’s Twitter feed. Cyber Squirrel 1 satirically compares infrastructure and power grid outages known to have been caused by animals — particularly squirrels — versus official attacks on the same infrastructure by state actors or terrorists.

Squirrels damage the grid by running up power lines, devouring wires and accidentally electrocuting themselves inside sensitive infrastructure. Squirrels cause more power outages than lightning and terrorism, according to Cyber Squirrel 1.

The website states “all unclassified Cyber Squirrel Operations that have been released to the public that we have been able to confirm. There are many more executed ops than displayed on this map however, those ops remain classified.”

(Source: Cyber Squirrel 1) The satirical map by Cybersquirrel 1 shows every time a squirrel shut down power in 2015.

The website also tracks squirrel-caused outages by month. In December alone, an array of animals caused 24 power outages, 11 of the attacks were directly caused by squirrels. These outages impacted 77,264 utility customers in 17 states, as well as four countries.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].